Don’t you find it strange that we have had an active
and extremely lively correspondence on one particular
theoretical question, one particular book, one particular
theory, and that we have never had any correspondence on
the vitally urgent questions of that sphere of Russian
journalism in which both of us have had to take some
considerable part in recent times?

I personally find it strange. I think there can absolutely
be no circumstances—and there are none—which could
serve as any kind of justification for the absence of such
correspondence, since you yourself once pointed out, and
quite rightly, that we all feel the harmfulness of
detachment, isolation, a certain solitude, etc.

I hope, therefore, that I will meet with your support
if I start right out with correspondence No. 2 (for No. 1,
about the book and the theory, is proceeding on its own
and will continue to do so).

You were acquainted, I think, though distantly, with
Pokrovsky 2nd? What do you think of the latest
explanation by the Senate? I mean the one under which the tenant
qualification requires actual occupation of the premises?
After all, it looks as though this explanation, made just
before the elections in the 2nd curia, is specifically aimed
at Pokrovsky 2nd, Predkaln, etc.! Can they have any other
qualification in their own localities except that of tenant?
And how could they, being members of the Duma, “actually
occupy” their apartments in their localities for, say, a
year? And if they are being “explained”, should not
Pokrovsky 2nd be invited to stand in St. Petersburg, where
he probably has a qualification that is much more reliable,
i.e., one less subject to “explanation”? I personally would
very much sympathise with such a candidature in St.
Petersburg (alongside the two evidently indisputable candidates
who caused the stupid and brazen Luck to come out
with its stupid and brazenly cowardly repudiation). I shall
be most grateful if you summon the effort to drop me a
line or two (in reply to my 200) on your views of this matter.

Furthermore, I should like to discuss the two workers’
papers at St. Petersburg. Luch is base and unprincipled:
it’s not a paper, but a “leaflet for subverting” the
Social-Democratic candidate. But they know how to fight, they
are lively and glib. Meanwhile Pravda is carrying on now,
at election time, like a sleepy old maid. Pravda doesn’t
know how to fight. It does not attack, it does not
persecute either the Cadet or the liquidator. But can an organ
of forward-looking democrats not be a fighting organ at
a hot time like this? Let’s give it the benefit of the doubt:
let’s assume that Pravda is sure that the anti-liquidators
will win. All the same it should fight to let the country
know what is involved, who is disrupting the election
campaign, and what ideas are at stake in the struggle.
Luch is fighting furiously, hysterically, abandoning its
principles in the most shameless fashion. Pravda—to
spite it—puts on a “serious mien”, affects various airs
and graces, and fails to fight at all! Does that look like
Marxism? After all, didn’t Marx know how to combine
war, the most passionate, whole-hearted and merciless
war, with complete loyalty to principle?

Not to fight at election time is suicide. Look at what
Luch’s “Cadet-eating” has come to! And the Pravda people
were afraid that we might be overdoing the Cadet-eating!